Recipients of publisher message content are inundated with publisher message content from a number of means. The postal service delivers bulk mail at a discount postage rate to allow advertisers, both local and nationwide, to send publisher message content to recipients for their products and services. Radio and television delivers publisher message content, both public and private, to recipients. Telemarketers and political organizations use both land line telephones and cellular phones to deliver message content to recipients as well as gather demographic data. The most recent method to deliver message content is the use of a recipient's email account and even a recipient's business or work email account.
Marketing and advertising is constantly searching for ways and means to deliver publisher message content in a more focused manner in order to optimize results for monies spent on marketing and advertising. For example, marketing and advertising rates for radio and television vary with the time of day and the programming event on radio or television. Stationary signage rates vary with geospatial location, usually based on the traffic flow of people that have visual contact with the signage. These techniques are still based on mass numbers of recipients yielding a very small percentage of results. To better focus on types of recipients, advertising will apply product and service advertisements based on the audience of a radio or television programming event, especially sports programming. This works well for large advertisers but is too expensive for small local businesses that offer sports products and services that would also be applicable to the viewing audience.
As technology evolves, especially in wireless technology, advances in miniaturization, lower power consumption and display technology provides technology enablers that allow for multiple modes of message content as well as delivery methods. Today the modes of message delivery range from simple text messaging to streaming audio and streaming video in the palm of a recipient's hand. The delivery methods range from traditional stationary and mobile static signage to wireless portable devices.
All of the traditional methods to deliver message content deliver results based on the volume of message content delivered to a volume of recipients. These methods are usually not focused on either the recipient's need for the message content or the geospatial location of the recipient which would more easily permit the recipient to take immediate action on the publisher's message content.
Recipients also have a need to find products and services and these needs change with geospatial location and time. This is especially relevant when the recipient is traveling or is at a geospatial location where the recipient does not have familiarity with the local retail infrastructure, surface streets or businesses. In addition, events that occur regarding the recipient also create a recipient's dynamic need for products and services not needed prior to the event.
Publishers spend monies on message content, some of which is seasonal, some of which is market driven, some of which is event driven. For example seasonal items such as clothing, need to purge end of season stock in order to make room for the next season's stock. An example of market driven items, such as a new movie, may only appear at certain theatres. An example of event driven items, such as a gas fired electric generator, may be caused by power outages resulting from a severe storm.
Today recipients are inundated with irrelevant message content yet still have a need for specific message content based on the current needs of the recipient and the recipient's geospatial location. The challenge is how to deliver message content that the recipient needs and allows the recipient to acquire the product or service needed in a timely manner.
The product or service for the recipient can also be provided from the public sector. Emergency information, such as evacuation routes, can be broadcast to both stationary and mobile dynamic display devices. Today Amber Alerts generated by law enforcement on public dynamic display devices could be delivered on private stationary and mobile dynamic display devices dramatically increasing the coverage for public service message delivery.
Existing technology and its components and methods are described hereinafter. The existing state of the art and its components and methods can be seen in the following art.
U.S. Pat. App. 2003/0055725 A1 (hereinafter referred to as the '725 patent application) discloses an end to end system that uses the Internet and wireless portable devices with subscribers. This invention discloses pushing lists of advertisements, converted from advertiser inputs via an advertiser input screen, stored in a database, converted to a format supported by the subscriber's wireless display device from which the subscriber selects advertisements of interest to be further converted and pushed to wireless subscribers.
U.S. Pat. App. 2002/0120518 A1 (hereinafter referred to as the '518 patent application) discloses a system and method for using public display devices in conjunction with kiosks to gather demographic information about the people that would see the display. The kiosks would dispense shopping bags or offer some other form of compensation for viewers entering demographic information. Once demographic information is entered the data base server would display advertisements specific to the demographic data entered at the kiosk. Another embodiment would be using cameras to gather demographic information on gender, race and age to determine what advertisements to display.
U.S. Pat. App. 2002/0087401 A1 (hereinafter referred to as the '401 patent application) discloses a method and system to “broadcast advertising to a mobile communication device”. The '401 patent application provides a mobile device driving directions to the advertising sources. FIG. 1 of the 401 patent application also discloses a plurality of “advertising broadcast systems” and not a central system as disclosed by this invention. FIG. 3 of the 401 patent application discloses GPS used as a locating means for display booths and the mobile device.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,848,397 (hereinafter referred to as the '397 patent) discloses a method and apparatus for displaying advertising content on a client's computer system using email delivery. The '397 patent discloses a client submitting a profile that determines advertising content scheduled for the client.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,228,341 (hereinafter referred to as the '341 patent) discloses a method whereby there are five different scheduling algorithms for scheduling the play back of audio or video. The content is scheduled on a plurality of media player units each controlled by a player controller. The '341 patent relates to the scheduling methods for content on “media players.” The invention allows publishers to determine the start date, start time, end date, end time, interval, duration and geospatial location of the stationary or mobile dynamic display devices for message content to recipients.
U.S. Pat. App. 2003/0080999 (hereinafter referred to as the '999 patent application) discloses a method and apparatus for the delivery of advertising content to a plurality of “media outlets” including all traditional forms of advertising, printed and electronic. The '999 patent application has the concept of a “seller interface” and a “buyer interface” and resembles an E-commerce system whereby sellers create advertisements, manage inventory and process electronic orders from buyers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,009,409 (hereinafter referred to as the '409 patent) discloses “A system and method for scheduling and controlling delivery of advertising in a communications network and a communications network and remote computer program employing the system or the method.” The '409 patent discloses in FIGS. 1-3 a method if displaying advertising content on a region of the screen of a computer monitor.
U.S. Pat. App. 2001/0003846 (hereinafter referred to as the '846 patent application) discloses using a Web server to distribute streaming media to home computers and being able to originate content from a home computer notated as “Home Based Processing Unit.” There is no disclosure in the '846 patent application related to geospatial location based message.
U.S. Pat. App. 2002/0178445 A1 (hereinafter referred to as the '445 patent application) discloses in FIG. 1 the subscriber receiving advertisements on their home television or home computer and there is no illustration or disclosure of the subscriber receiving advertisement by portable wireless display devices or public dynamic display devices, stationary or mobile. The '445 patent discloses and claims a method for displaying advertising to subscribers based on either displaying an advertising guide menu or receiving a subscriber request for an advertisement to be stored for display when available.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,286,029 (hereinafter referred to as the '029 patent) discloses an intermediate server between kiosk computers and advertisers. According to the '029 patent this allows the kiosks to passively obtain content from multiple advertisers allowing the kiosk to be a more simple computer. In addition the intermediate server isolates the kiosks from direct access to the Internet allowing only appropriate content being displayed on the kiosk.
The enabling technology components and methods are described next. Dynamic digital display technology for outdoor use has several technology challenges: 1) Outdoor conditions have a wide dynamic range of ambient lighting conditions from darkness to full sunlight which challenges illuminated signage to be seen by the human eye, especially full sunlight. Large outdoor dynamic digital displays have typically been so expensive that they have only been used for special locations such as stadiums and casinos; 2) Outdoor dynamic digital displays must be ruggedized to survive the ambient conditions of outdoor temperatures and humidity; 3) Outdoor dynamic digital displays for billboard applications must be able to be manufactured in large form factors, be flexible to conform to uneven surfaces and be serviceable.
U.S. Pat. App. 2009/0146919 A1 (Hereinafter referred to as the '919 patent application) discloses a large scale LED display invention that solves the problems with dynamic digital displays described above. The '919 patent application also discloses “For example, where the center-to-center spacing between adjacent LED modules is 50 mm or greater, one or more red, one or more blue and one or more green LEDs can provide a light output for the display of 5,000 nits or greater depending upon the flux density of the LEDs so that the display 10 is suitable for use outdoors in sunlight.”
Locating portable wireless communication devices indoors, particularly in reinforced buildings and subterranean structures, currently relies on wireless triangulation and/or Time Distance Of Arrival (TDOC) cellular techniques. The accuracy is poor and is directly proportional to tower density and the affects of multipath, caused by distortion effects on wireless signals. Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) would normally be used as a means of dead reckoning, but are typically large and very expensive and have poor performance at low acceleration rates such as walking/jogging/running. INS systems also consume a lot of power which is not desirable for portable devices. Accelerometers alone only provide linear rates of acceleration. To obtain rotational changes, such as a change in direction, gyroscopes must be used, again suffering from the same problems as accelerometers. Compass devices have been used to substitute compass heading changes as a means for determining a change in direction, but indoors, especially in reinforced buildings, the metal distorts magnetic fields and the compass solution has a high error factor.
U.S. Pat. App. 2009/0326851 (hereinafter referred to as the '851 patent application) discloses Micro Electronic Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology applied to accelerometers and gyroscopes that has a small form factor, high accuracy that can dead reckon a person walking and consumes low power.
U.S. Pat. App. 2002/0194914 (hereinafter referred to as the '914 patent application) discloses “Inertial trackers have been successfully applied to a wide range of head mounted display (HMD) applications including virtual environment training, VR gaming and even fixed-base vehicle simulation, in which they have gained widespread acceptance due to their superior resolution and low latency.”
A commercial example of this miniature INS technology can be found in a product named NavChip™. The NavChip™ product sheet states: “At roughly the size of a penny, the NavChip™ employs ground breaking MEMS technology to provide unprecedented low noise and stability. As the industry's first commercial IMU chip, the NavChip represents a 12-fold improvement in angular random walk and a 6-fold improvement in bias in-run stability compared to previous commercial-grade MEMS IMUs. This device claims less than 1% linear drift over distance traveled resulting in an accuracy of 10 meters for every Km traveled. The power consumption is 120 mW. Therefore the size, power consumption and error rate make it capable of accurately dead reckoning a portable wireless display device indoors. With a rotational error of 0.5%, accurate headings are also available.
U.S. Pat. App. 2008/0144264 (hereinafter referred to as the '264 patent application) discloses an invention that relates to a three part housing a wireless communication device that can be head worn with a multimedia display that flips up to provide a visor.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,454,290 (hereinafter referred to as the '290 patent) discloses a combined GPS (Global Positioning System) and INS (Inertial Navigation System) to determine the attitude (location, elevation & orientation) of a vehicle. The 290 patent in the “SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION” states: “This invention provides a low cost and robust GPS-INS attitude system for vehicles.”
U.S. Pat. No. 6,031,454 (Hereinafter referred to as the '454 patent) discloses a UHF antenna based system that describes a radar responsive tag that utilizes very low power, has better azimuth and range precision that cellular CDMA methods, better penetration into subterranean and reinforced buildings, is less influenced by multipath errors and has a very small faun factor.
Recognition of images, as opposed to character (text) recognition such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition), as is known in the art, is not commonplace, especially for 3 dimensional aspects. An advertiser that desires confirmation that advertising content has been acknowledged by a viewer has few means to obtain this information electronically.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,639,881 (hereinafter referred to as the '881 patent) discloses a method for performing visual recognition tasks for image recognition in two dimensions. The 881 patent states: “The subject invention relates generally to recognition, and more particularly to systems and methods that employ grammatical parsing to facilitate in visual recognition tasks.” The invention disclosed herein uses visual recognition as a resident application on portable wireless display devices both hand held and head mounted.
Clearly, there is a need for an improved end to end system for message content delivery based on the current geospatial location of the recipient for both private and public publishers of message content that improves the current state of the art. Additionally, there is a need to provide this new capability to small businesses and individuals as well as traditional advertising companies and large businesses.